Jordi Núñez | Amor de Dios / 2016

what isn’t spoken

by Douglas Messerli   

 

Jordi Núñez (screenwriter and director) Amor de Dios / 2016 [14 minutes]

 

In Spanish director Jordi Núñez’s short cinema, Amor de Dios, the good-looking gay man, Edu (Javier Amann) has evidently left his beach community where he had been attending school and was in a relationship with Jaime. He’s gone to Madrid to write a script, one of his female friends, Paula (Nakarey Fernández), regularly sending him videos to remind him of what he’s missing.

     But we also recognize that something has gone amiss between him and his lover, who refuses to even respond on the videos Paula sends him. Having a weekend off, she comes to visit him, telling him what appears to be a white lie, that Jaimie will soon be coming as well.

     The two, who get on well, have a truly pleasurable weekend, sharing the bed in Edu’s small new apartment, and possibly even having sex; and it’s clear that Paula dearly loves him and might wish him as her boyfriend instead of the men who she joyfully mocks. But her very presence, reminding him of the good times he has had with his friends, suggests that she has come in Jaime’s stead, and that Edu’s gay relationship may now be a thing of the past.

     As such, this short work becomes almost a poem to loneliness, Edu’s loss of his lover and Paula’s loss of a close friend, events that occur when a bosom buddy like Edu move away, leaving those who love him behind. This summer movie is about one of their close friends having now moved on, and the sadness that pervades all of them in the process. Paula’s visit, we fear, may represent the last contact he has with what has obviously been a loving and enjoyable youth.

 

Los Angeles, March 6, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (March 2024).